It’s Broken; Let’s Fix It: The Traditional Model of School Librarianship

“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
~Anonymous~

CC licensed image http://bit.ly/cqKIP3

The 2009-10 academic year has been a sea-change in many ways for me.  While I have experienced several positive shifts professionally and personally, one of the most profound influences on my thinking has been the Media 21 project, a wonderful learning experience that has allowed me to participate in the ultimate level of librarian, classroom teacher, and student collaboration.    Media 21 has been praxis in action in which theory has informed my practice, and in turn, practice informing how I theorize my work as a librarian.  A few months ago, I would have said this collaborative partnership was a dream come true, but as the school year draws to a close (where did the time go?), I would say my Media 21 partnership is also the beginning of  many new professional dreams and inspiring a vision of the potential of this kind of rich and deep-rooted collaboration.

All this positive energy and optimism I feel most days  is in juxtaposition to the concern and frustration generated by the crisis we face in the library ecosystem:  reduced funding for personnel and purchases for academic, public, and school libraries and our worry about the impact of these cuts on those we serve.  As a school librarian, I am especially troubled by the disturbing number of school districts across the country that are choosing to reduce or eliminate staffing as well as funding for library materials and services at a time when information literacy is increasingly important in today’s cultural and educational landscape.   It is as though representatives of local, state, and yes, even the federal government are oblivious to the fact that our very own president declared information literacy an essential for participation in our society (although the proposed budget doesn’t seem to support this official proclamation); many governmental bodies are seemingly turning a deaf ear to the call from respected groups like the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy to play an integral role in positioning information and new literacy (I would go so far as to say transliteracy) as mainstream and vital literacies (see Recommendation 6 and Recommendation 7).

Librarians in multiple communities have brainstormed and shared a plethora of advocacy efforts and strategies for innovating in these challenging times.    This crisis is exacerbated in school librarianship by our shifting role in the educational landscape and as like many of our colleagues in education, try to do more with less.  However, the cuts suffered by school libraries are particularly devastating because the services impact an entire school population.    Even the most resilient, resourceful, and energetic school librarians are hard pressed to effectively fulfill the five major roles of school librarians set forth in Empowering Learners:  Guidelines for School Library Media Programs.

For some time, I have been troubled by the current model of school librarianship and the flaws I see with the dynamics associated with this model that essentially settles for one or two school librarians and a clerk or paraprofessional (if they are lucky)  to serve 1000 or more students.  Is this model working?   To some extent yes, but only because school librarians, being the determined lot we are, make it work because we have to.  We struggle to establish meaningful collaborative partnerships that impact more than just a few segments of our school; most librarians I know would say collaboration is probably our greatest joy and our greatest challenge.

But is it the best model?  Is it a model that makes sense for today’s culture of learning or for the culture of learning we want to foster in schools?  Not so much.   It strikes me how ridiculous it is to expect that school librarians can excel in all five roles, or even a few of them, when forced to conform to this model of school librarianship.   I am struck by how ridiculous these assumptions are, especially when you consider that in some schools, that number may jump to 2000 or more, or in some places, the school librarian is shared among multiple schools and or may not have an entire day dedicated in one school location.

This current model of school librarianship is simply not scalable in its current incarnation as I have discovered this year through Media 21.  These kinds of intense and ongoing collaborative efforts require a tremendous investment of time during the school day as well as after hours; it is physically impossible for me to replicate a Media 21 type experience beyond one to two additional teachers because there simply isn’t enough of me as a human resource to go around.    While Susan Lester and I are thrilled with the progress and growth we’ve seen in our students, we can’t help but wonder how much more our students could evolve if they could have the kinds of learning experiences we provide them across the curriculum and with the team approach we provide them through our partnership.

After Susan and I discussed this very notion last Friday after school as we mused about possibilities for 2010-11, it suddenly became crystal clear to me that for school libraries to truly represent the qualities we value about 21st century learning, we must be willing to let go of the traditional model of school librarianship and grasp one that is bolder in scope and practice.  The model of the solitary librarian (who might be lucky to have an additional partner) toiling in a piecemeal effort to infuse information literacy skills into the curriculum and to be a true collaborative partner to a disproportionate ration of teachers and students is in direct conflict to the model of 21st century classrooms that values  learning focused on collective intelligence and collaborative knowledge building as a  community of learners.  How much more seamless and authentic would research, content creation, and evaluation of information be if school librarians were embedded in a team of classroom teachers?  This model would help teachers, students,and school librarians engage in conversations about multiple forms of literacy and consequently, position information literacy as an essential and integrated literacy into content area instruction.   Research, information seeking and evaluation, and creation of content would no longer be an isolated activity students engaged in once or twice or year, but instead, a regular learning experience.

I dream of a model of school librarianship that embeds us in the classroom whether it be the classroom of a teacher, our library space, or a learning space outside the traditional school building (such as virtual).   Until we are integrated into our school’s department or interdisciplinary teams, I feel we cannot realize our full potential as sponsors of transliteracy and information specialists who can facilitate and support powerful learning experiences with teachers and students.  What if we envisioned the school library as an academic department that partnered and co-taught with other departments rather than as “support” personnel?  How much more could I do for my school if I was embedded directly into the heart of instruction either with another academic department, or even better, an interdisciplinary team?

With this model, I also see space for a larger library staff to work together to facilitate other areas of the school library program.  Perhaps each librarian might be attached to his/her academic team three to four days a week and then have one to two full days in the library to work on other roles and duties within the overall library program.

Most importantly, this model of school librarianship  would greatly improve our ability to establish and cultivate rich relationships with faculty and students.  I have truly come to see this year that the foundation of successful teacher, student, and librarian collaboration is building meaningful relationships; we cannot ask others to have faith in us, to trust us, to let us become part of their world of teaching and learning without building a relationship that has depth and substance.  How much more effectively could we build our “tribe”and lead through example if we were embedded into an academic department or interdisciplinary team?

I realize this vision sounds radical and perhaps even foolhardy in light of the economic climate and the fact that school districts are cutting, not increasing, library staffing.  However, I feel our profession is at a crossroads;  I don’t believe we can fully express the full potential of our “librarian genes” unless the conditions in which we exist change.  We cannot be content to “settle” and accept the limitations funding cuts impose upon our potential as catalysts in our learning communities.  We cannot be shrinking violets by meekly accepting these cuts that ultimately hurt teachers and students.  We must wave the banner for a new model of school librarianship that ultimately is an investment in our learning communities.

While this vision of a new form of school librarianship will probably need fine tuning and my initial musings here are somewhat rambling , I’m interested in what you think.  I am interested in what my students, my teachers, and my administration think.  For a moment, forget the budget cuts, forget it has never be done (to my knowledge), forget the obstacles we will face in implementing this model.  While it may seem like an impossible and improbable reality, effective and real change cannot begin unless we dare to challenge the status quo and to thoroughly interrogate our practice, our beliefs, and our stance on librarianship on a regular basis.  Dr. Bob Fecho instilled in me the value of reflection and action through the simple question,  ”Why are you doing this?”.  When I think about this model of school librarianship, I can’t help but ask, “Why aren’t we doing this?”

Libraries and Librarians As Sponsors of Literacy

Please check out my new and expanded version of looking at libraries as sponsors of literacy, or more specifically, transliteracy.  This talk is being delivered today, April 13,  at the Alabama Library Association YASRT/CSLD Preconference.  This presentation is rooted in my previous studies (you can see my papers and readings from 2005 on my Slideshare page under “documents”) in the work of Dr. Deborah Brandt.  I am very interested in replicating her ethnographic study with a focus on an expanded definition of literacy.

Reading and Writing the World: School Libraries as Sponsors of Transliteracy, CIL 2010

In this brief talk that is part of a larger presentation with Bobbi Newman and Matt Hamilton at Computers in Libraries (CIL)  2010 on Monday, April 12 at 11:30 AM in E102, I will discuss how librarians can use the frameworks of participatory librarianship and sponsors of  literacy to conceptualize the ways we can integrate transliteracy seamlessly into our library programs.   I also hope to post a video of this talk on YouTube later this week.  You can visit the resource page for this talk at http://theunquietlibrarian.wikispaces.com/School+Libraries+as+Sponsors+of+Transliteracy .

Sponsors of Literacy in Contemporary Culture: An E-Interview with Dr. Deborah Brandt

""Reading", a CC Licensed Photo from http://bit.ly/aaiw8G

Dr. Deborah Brandt is a Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts (1990), Literacy in American Lives (2001), and Literacy and Learning: Reading, Writing, Society (2009). Dr. Brandt identifies her research interests as  social and economic histories of mass literacy; the status of mass writing within late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture; diversity, equity, and access in literacy learning.

I first became interested in Dr. Brandt’s work in 2005 as part of a two semester independent research project I undertook under the direction of Dr. Mark Faust at the University of Georgia in the final year of my Ed.S. studies.  Dr. Brandt’s work informed this research project and the three initial questions I sought to examine:

• What different kinds of literate communities exist, and how are they sponsors of literacy?
• How do these literate communities and literacy sponsors shape lifelong reading?  How do they affect cultural perceptions about reading?
• How do books and reading define culture?  How does culture define books and reading?

As part of this two-semester research project, I replicated (in my fledgling researcher way) Brandt’s research study on a small scale and explored the results of the data I collected.  I would post my paper here via Slideshare, but under the terms of my IRB, I am not allowed to publish the work, but my findings were fairly consistent with those of Dr. Brandt’s even though my interview pool was much smaller.

Brandt takes a critical and sociolinguistic stance on literacy.  In Literacy in American Lives, an ethnography of the literacy histories of eighty Americans, Deborah Brandt critically examines literacy learning, literacy development, and literacy opportunities through the critical lens of sponsors of literacy:  “…any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstracts, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way…sponsors are delivery systems for the economies of literacy, the means by which these forces present themselves to—and through–individual learners.  They also represent the causes into which people’s literacy usually gets required” (19).  Brandt views literacy a “valuable—and volatile property” (2) that can potentially help individuals gain “…power or pleasure, [accrue] information, civil rights, education, spirituality, status, [and] money” (7).

Brandt maintains in Literacy in American Lives that these sponsors of literacy are agents who “…support or discourage literacy learning and development as ulterior motive in their own struggles for economic or political gain” (26).  By looking at sponsors of literacy in the lives of an individual, one can more easily see the economic forces at work in a person’s literacy learning history.  Most importantly, Brandt feels that the analytical lens of sponsors of literacy reveals the connections between “…the ways money gets made and the way that literacy gets made” (26).  By looking at the sponsorship of literacy in an individual’s life, one can see how acts of literacy learning reflect the social and economic conditions of an individual’s life and to trace the changing conditions of literacy learning across generations.

Five years later, I am still very interested in Brandt’s work and would like to engage in new research to revisit these questions, but I now would like to expand my definition of “literacy” and examine how people acquire and use other forms of literacy besides the traditional forms of reading and writing.  In particular, I’m interested in looking at how people acquire and use multiple forms of literacy (with a focus on my expanding definition of information literacy) and how I could use the concept of transliteracy to theorize my findings.

Dr. Brandt graciously agreed to participate in a mini e-interview with me this last week and to share that e-interview with all of you via my blog.  Below is the transcript of that e-interview:

1. Who or what do you feel now functions as primary sponsors of literacy (traditional as well as emerging/new literacies) in today’s society?

In all of these answers, my inclination is to say “it depends.” It depends on who we are talking about, where we are talking about, and why we are talking about it. The great big sponsors of literacy throughout history have always been religions, states (including schools and military), and commerce and I don’t really see that changing. These are the big catalysts for literacy learning and the agents of change and appropriation.

2. What economic, political, and/or cultural forces do you see impacting who (individuals or institutions) functions as primary sponsors of literacy?

Because our economy has shifted from manufacturing things to manufacturing symbols (mostly, written symbols which both deliver and manage services),literacy has been drawn much more directly into work in this country. The productivity of the country (its ability to compete globally) depends much more on the mass literacy of its citizens. So I think that is why we see technologies being used to stimulate people’s appetite for communication (these are the underlying skills the economy wants and needs and so it entices people to develop their communication skills during their leisure time so that eventually these skills can convert into labor), why the schools are being pressured more than ever to produce highly functioning literates, and why the “goodness” of literacy is seen less in terms of morality or (democratic) nation-building and more in terms of what it can do economically. In saying all this I do not mean to advocate for this view of literacy but only to suggest the pressures that create it. Because literacy has been so drawn into economic competition, we will inevitably be in literacy shortfall–in perpetual literacy crisis. There will never be enough. And this puts enormous pressures on teachers and students.

One of the big shifts that come along with literacy for productivity is the growing importance of writing. We will see much more attention to writing in schools in the coming years.

3. Last fall, the Knight Commission released a report and > recommendations on “The Information Needs of Communities in a  Democracy”. I was wondering your thoughts and/or reactions to Recommendation 6 —do you feel these new  literacies will be an essential form of “cultural capital” in today’s  society? Do you think we may see a widening gap in segments of  society in terms of access to these forms of literacy? (I’m thinking people who don’t have access to broadband at home or school and/or a place to access the Internet at a public library).

We know from history that changes that are introduced into literacy and communication rarely result in changes in the social order–the routes to access and reward for new literacies will take predictable forms that favor the already privileged. Also, as in the past, even obtaining high levels of technological skill and experience will not inoculate people against discrimination by gender, race, class, age, or other sources of stigma. But this means that our democratic institutions (schools and libraries particularly) have to work hard and thoughtfully to mitigate these forces. The gaps are complicated. One big gap is generational, creating problems in schools where older teachers struggle to keep up with technologically innovative students. We have to find better ways of allowing young people’s skills developed outside of formal institutions to flow more regularly into school. We have to make sure schools and libraries invite critical and active uses of media that strengthen our democratic potential. Wouldn’t it be great if people could go to their school or public library and get into conversation (by video conference or by internet) with people from all over their society and their world? This is certainly a period when educators and librarians and others could really re-imagine education and what is possible with new technology to distribute access and reward more equitably and to make sure that these incredibly powerful resources are used to better people lives and increase our capacities for democracy and justice.

Works Cited

Brandt, D. (2001).  Literacy in American Lives.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.

Information Literacy and Inquiry as Disruption to School Culture Oppressed by Testing

My Media 21 project is inspired by the work of Wendy Drexler and Dr. Michael Wesch; this tweet from last week’s NEIT Conference reflects an essential question driving my Media 21 project:

As my Media 21 students have shared some new research reflections in the last week, I have felt both overjoyed and frustrated by responses.  How is it that some students have seen the last 15 weeks as the most challenging and rewarding learning experience of their lives that they hope will continue second semester while others have viewed the learning experiences more as a chore and something to simply “get done”?  Why do some students embrace reflection and original thinking while others chafe in the face of learning experiences that do not reflect the knowledge banking nature of today’s test driven educational climate?

In reflecting and returning to a reality that I faced when I adopted a literacy as inquiry stance as a classroom teacher in 2002, I am revisiting my studies of literacy as inquiry with Dr. Bob Fecho at the University of Georgia.  Just as some students resisted a learning environment I created that valued questions, not black and white answers, I see this resistance in some of my Media 21 students who seem to prefer learning activities that value regurgitation of facts rather than questioning or critical, creative thinking.  This question came up during Dr. Wesch’s keynote at NEIT:

In my corner of the world, my answer is “More than you might think.”  While some students are liberated by choice and free thought, others feel threatened by a learning environment that is inquiry driven and participatory in nature.    I can’t help but think that this phenomenon is easier to comprehend when you consider today’s students are among the first generation to grow up in a test driven school culture that is contradictory to inquiry.

What is inquiry? Here are qualities identified by classmate Sharon Murphy in Fall of 2002:

• Dis-ease. There are many questions raised without answers.

• Establishes more than the teacher as validator of knowledge/work.

• Feeling of responsibility to yourself and the class.

• Recognizes classroom as a complicated, non-laboratory place filled with complex, caring human beings.

• Fights culture of school that wants THE right answer.

• Doesn’t hide what is occurring in class and makes class part of determining what is occurring.

• Patience- doesn’t give up too quickly and realizes community/learning/inquiry doesn’t happen overnight.

Does this sound like the learning environment many school librarians crave yet find themselves hungering for it in the current educational landscape?

In revisiting my initial reading of Pedagogy of the Oppressed of 2002, Paulo Freire says the oppressed are often “hosts” of the oppressor (48) because they are so immersed in the culture of oppression.   Does this description fit today’s student who must buy into the testing culture so privileged (whether by choice or force) by public schools?  Does it also apply to many classroom teachers whose careers are judged by test scores and perhaps even our profession as school librarians as we are called upon to tie our programs to student achievement in order to “survive”?  How does the assimilation of the discourse of testing impact how students transactions with information and how they construct knowledge?

The current test driven culture values knowledge banking and correct answers; standardized curriculum and conformity to ways of knowing and learning are the hallmarks of contemporary American education.  In many schools, students and teachers feel pressured to “cover” knowledge precisely and efficiently.  Contrast these values to those Freire asserts:

“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”(72).

So what does this all mean?  Right now, some key ideas are resonating with me:

• While my M.Ed. and Ed.S. studies focused on literacy as inquiry, I’m now thinking about information literacy and transliteracy through an inquiry lens.
• I’m wondering how do school libraries and librarians act as sponsors of these kinds of literacy in the spirit of Deborah Brandt’s work, Literacy in American Lives?
• I’m thinking about danah boyd’s concept and thoughts on power, information brokers, and information ecosystems as well as how inquiry plays out through these ideas.
• What are the implications of student resistance to inquiry driven learning environments and an inquiry stance on information literacy and fluency?

My big question:  how can inquiry driven learning and an inquiry stance on information literacy positively disrupt students who are entrenched and oppressed by the testing culture?  How can participatory librarianship support inquiry and students who find conversations about learning troublesome rather than empowering?   How do we address their “dis-ease” they feel as they are pushed out of their comfort zone?  How can school librarians and libraries be more effective sponsors of information literacy and transliteracy?